Welcome

Since Digital Beckley started doing business in 2005, one of the goals was to educate the business community on the benefits of having a BUSINESS class website. Business class - what does that mean exactly?

Business class is a website that allows a business to DO business online. This can range from customer data collection to entire HR operations, to online sales or bill payment, and even internal operations such as Customer Relationship Management or Inventory maintanence.

These blogs are meant to just be food for thought - they are NOT the official stance of Digital Beckley. Though they may have some influence on how Digital Beckley approaches web design and development.

Southern West Virginia seems to be the technology stepchild of the state.  This blog site is designed to separate myth from fact and expose some secrets of web design so that businesses know what to look for BEFORE signing a contract.

 

About the author

I've been involved in Internet technology since the early 90's. I started by running a BBS, then FIDOnet (precursor to todays e-mail). This in turn lead me to start one of the world's first HTML based BBS with Internet technology. Prior to moving back to hometown WV in 2004, I was a developer for numerous companies, including Fortune 500 firms, dot com 'darling' companies, and AOL's public web site (non-member side) inlcuding having completed many sites for the Federal government including the EPA, FCC, NIH, and the USDA. I've worked on massive challenging sites, with a teams of developers, programmers, all for one single site and I've worked in companies where I took manula web site production from several weeks to just hours creating 2-5 new sites a week using automated tools , many with e-commerce capabilities.

Its been an exciting career for the past 15+ yrs or so. Sure, I've stepped on toes, I've hit the perverbial glass ceiling too (in a previous job),  I've seen trends come and go (heck I may have even started a few). I've made some people a lot of money, and I've seen people put their entire life into a web site. I was there at  the beginning - where were you?

I've learned to tell what works for companies and what doesn't. The internet is not one size fits all, as social networking is not for every company. Technology is not the challenge. Almost all the internet technology suitable for everyday business is off-the-shelf, the true challenge is change. Change involves education, implementation, and adaptation.